Students ask Canberra to put on charter flight out of Wuhan

Students trapped in Wuhan have asked the Morrison government if they can fly to Christmas Island, at their own expense.

Petition organiser Zixuan Wang, centre, with family members at Wuhan's East Lake.

Chinese students trapped in Wuhan have asked the Morrison government to support their proposal­ to fly a chartered plane to Christmas Island — at the ­students’ expense — to escape the coronavirus-stricken city.

The anxious students have even offered to pay the cost of their 14-day detention on the island­, although they admit to not knowing how expensive the trip would be.

“We desperately want to return­ to our beautiful Australia,” wrote Zixuan Wang, a recent graduate of the University of Sydney, in a letter to Foreign Minister Marise Payne sent the night before­ the Morrison government’s national security committee met to discuss its ongoing coronavirus travel ban.

The ambitious proposal would require the Australian government to get an exemption from the Hubei government’s quarantine of more than 50 million people, the signature policy of Pres­i­dent Xi Jinping’s government in the “People’s War” it launched on COVID-19 over a month ago.

The initial response from the Australian government was not promising for the students, many of whom are paying more than $25,000 a semester in tuition — plus their inner-city living expenses — to study in Australia.

“Australia has no plans for further­ assisted departure flights,” said a spokesperson for the Departme­nt of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

And after The Australian revealed­ the proposal online on Thursday on its Mandarin-­language website, some students tried to withdraw their support, fearing the proposal might offend Chinese officials.

Senator Payne was sent the request on Wednesday. Titled “A plea for help from Wuhan stud­ents”, it included­ the names of more than 500 students stuck in Hubei’s capital since the city of 11 million people, the epicentre of COVID-19, was put into quarantine more than four weeks ago.

Sources in the university sector estimate that more than 2000 Australian citizens, permanent residents and Chinese students enrolled in Australian institutions remain trapped in the central province of Hubei. It has had almost­ 95 per cent of the world’s more than 2800 confirmed deaths from COVID-19. The request by the students to pay for their own travel and quarantine noted their “emotional turmoil”, as they remain­ stuck in Hubei, where healthcare workers are exhaust­ed, overstretched and in hundreds of cases have themselves been ­infected by COVID-19.

Mobile readers can read the letter here

Two proposals to the Morrison government were put forward by the Wuhan students.

“One way, if the Australian government allows it, is for the students to collectively charter a plane and fly to Christmas Island for quarantine for 14 days. Stud­ents would pay for both the plane and accommodation on Christmas Island, plus costs to travel them back to Sydney,” they wrote.

“Alternatively, we request the Australian government negotiate our departure from Wuhan Airport to a third country (eg Thailand) for 14 days and process our arrivals back into Australia,” they wrote.

Ms Wang, who has helped co-ordinate the petition, confirmed to The Australian that she had spoken with an airline in China that said it would be interested in leasing a plane if the required approval were granted.

While she said the scheme “won’t cost the Australian government anything”, it is not clear what the full cost would be for the required work by Australian government­ officials, diplomats and healthcare workers.

Well-informed government sources told The Australian negotiations with the Chinese government over the two evacuation flights from Wuhan were ex­treme­l­y difficult. It is far from clear whether another flight would be allowed by Chinese offic­ials. Some of the 500 students cannot get to universities at which they have paid full tuition fees. Many have paid for expensive accommodati­on in inner-city Sydney and Melbourne, which is now sitting empty.

Others are graduates, worried about losing their job offers if they cannot return to Australia.

And there are those with stud­ent visas that will expire in coming weeks, which could leave them stranded outside Australia for months and require them to get a health check in the Hubei healthcare system. In another sign of the extreme personal turmoil on those unable to leave Wuhan, a separate petition of 90 families numbering more than 200 Australian permanent residents and citizens was submitted to the House of Representatives.

Those who signed called to be treated equally to 702 other Australians who were evacuated by two assisted­ flights from Wuhan and from a cruise in Japan.

Leo Liu, a representative of the group, told The Australian they would not give up their efforts to go home as soon as possible.